Peripheral Visions

side effect of modern developments, peripheral to the human dramas we tend to focus on, but a recognition of similarity between our kind and theirs brings these remote dramas into the same story. On a much larger scale, the Gaia hypothesis, developed by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis, who adopted for the theory the name of the Greek goddess of the earth, asserts that this planet is alive. This integrates a vast amount of information in a single image: What we are talking about is life. It wiggles. It may bite. The metaphor provides a bridge from high technical specificity to all the experiences that go with direct contact with a living being.
    The Gaia hypothesis is not a simple assertion that could easily be proved or disproved. Instead it is a complex statement with multiple levels of meaning, like a work of art. At the simplest level, it asserts that this planet is characterized by the capacity for self-correction that characterizes living organisms, the maintenance of continuity by corrective variation. The composition of the atmosphere and the temperatures of the planet over time, for instance, are not accounted for by the laws of chemistry and physics alone, but apparently by processes of self-regulation within those laws. The Gaia hypothesis deepens the sense of the planet as developing, as having a history. Wiggling.
    There are several quite different responses to the idea of the earth as a living organism. Some people feel increased solicitude for a planet newly recognized as vulnerable, intricately beautiful. Others respond with nonchalance, saying Gaia can do her own housekeeping, leaving us free to continue as we are. Still others notice that the planet’s capacity for self-correction might well involve the end of the creatures that are making the trouble.
    When a metaphor is proposed it generates questions. You notice the puppy’s ears, and you wonder if the elephant has ears. You didn’t notice so much hair on the elephant—something else to wonder about. A metaphor goes on generating ideas and questions, so that a metaphorical approach to the world is endlessly fertile and involves constant learning. A good metaphor continues to instruct.
    When we assert that the planet is living, one of the ideas that springs to mind is that living things can die. They have needs that must be met. Their health is subject to thresholds of various sorts. We may extend the analogy and move quickly to wondering what part we represent in this organism. Are we, perhaps, the brain? That feels good. Are we the vectors of its reproduction, colonizing outer space? Or perhaps its immune system? Perhaps we are a virus running wild within it or the multiplying cells of a malignant tumor. As with any pathogen, the question arises whether this one will kill the organism it invades, or be eliminated or neutralized, or whether some balance will be achieved. Microbes ride the human body and depend on its health as we ride the earth. All these speculations and others come up in playing with the metaphor of earth as a living organism. A metaphor can propose testable questions and serve as a framework for synthesizing information. This is no small gain, for the challenge to meteorologists and chemists, physicists and geologists of synthesizing their knowledge far outdoes the problem of the blind men in the old story.
    There is another step implied in the Gaia hypothesis, the hint that the behavior and characteristics of this planet are best grasped by an analogy with the living organism we know best, a human being. Perhaps after we’ve handed the puppy to the blind man and the puppy has wriggled free and escaped, we will persuade our friend to feel his own nose and legs and notice that he has four limbs. He can use his own body as the model.
    The Greeks believed that every tree was inhabited by a dryad, a female spirit, who would die if the tree were cut down. Most of us know intellectually that trees are alive—they grow, they age, they breathe, they respond to the environment they’re in, they draw in nutrients, they have a metabolism, all those things—but it’s hard not to slip into seeing a tree as an inanimate object that is simply a given in a particular environment. Trees live at a different tempo from human beings—I didn’t slow down enough to notice the growth of trees until I was over forty—so it is hard to remember that a tree can suffer and become ill, though we are more aware than we used to be. Arguably, a